Mental

The mind is incredibly fragile, or flexible, depending on our point of view, a shift happening in our mood or thought either way in mere moments and by the most incremental of means: a temperament transported by a trifling word, a subtle scent or song, an accident or coincidence, some fortuitous interaction, untoward happening, or countless other strands of unexpected encounters that line our days, transform our experience, and so configure and constitute our consciousness. The parts of us thrilled by novelty, and thirsty for variety, come alive with such shifts, while other parts of us feel like we are on firmer footing with the familiar, and, accordingly, cling, quite fiercely, quite often, and with habitual unawareness, to patterns of thinking we have developed over time, ones we believe denote and connote us essentially, as a key psychic consolation, and safeguard, against the many outer and inner worldly threats that would rob us of a semblance of stability. This push toward the calcification of consciousness is a manipulation of the mind, motivated by our affinity for comfort, and avoidance of pain, while the pull toward the dynamism of difference, the fresh and original, comes to us from our curiosity, the banality of boredom, a creative, connectional impulse, and plethora of other drives. Yin and yang, as it were, are continually contrasting, commingling, and composing the material of the mind, and with a multiplicity of other such opposites likewise lurking within: an animalistic Id to an altruistic Superego in the language of Freud, a female Anima to the male Animus in the language of Jung, a mischievous Mr. Hyde to a docile Dr. Jekyll in the language of Stevenson, a brooding Hulk to a bookish Banner in the language of Lee, and so on. There is a marvelous manyness of various types of opposites contributing to the neural plasticity of the mind. We are entirely mental, and, admittedly, some of us more than others. Looking in the mirror in the morning, or strolling down a street of strangers, one might be forgiven for simply thinking that what you see on the surface of yourself or another is what you get, viz., a singularity, when, in fact, there is more than meets the eye, indeed, nothing less than a Hydra in disguise! William James was not wrong when he noticed that a person has as many selves as there are individuals to recognize them.